Bolero 02.05.12
Dance with me
Let the music tumble in your veins, and mine
Kill the pains with ruby wine
Dance
Give the dying night a chance.

Listen how the music kindles
How it swindles
Makes me yearn
Makes the candles twist and turn
Do you notice how I’m sweating
And you’re getting
Misty fever in your cheeks
And your undulating peaks
One by one, taking turn
Leaping as the music speaks
Burn the liquid night and burn.

How I wonder if you’re guessing
With my arms around you pressing
Why I grin
As I watch your chest erupting
And the night around you spin
Is it sin
To sublime as I am dancing
Sensing the music condensing
Into due upon your skin
What intoxicating madness are we in
Pulsing in this mystic dance
Or convulsing in a trance.

Stop
Oh, let the music die
Sun is yawning in the sky
And the night is mopping up the mess
Yes
I have longing to confess
Come with me and let us fly
Together where the eagles lie
Make a nest and love the time away
And I will love you
Like the morning loves the sun
Or the fleeting dear the run
Come and be my only one
Warm my night and light my day
Let our passions clash and prey
Piercing hot, engulf and sweep
Silent, slow, and deep.

The night is dead
Let the music gasp and weep
All the dancers left to sleep
To join the snoring masses
Alone I sit and watch the daylight creep
Into the empty glasses
Once full of dreams and pains
Now only wine remains
Angry, warm, and red
And pounding in my head.

The Loving You 01.29.12
As fortunes frown and life betrays
Time seeks to drown my golden days
I stand alone in desperate strife
Collecting meanings for my setting life

The triumph of my many youths
My loves, my ever-changing truths
The lofty peaks my soul and mind
Have reached, but I could only find

One mirthful light still burning true
Still never changing, through and through
Beyond the triumphs and the peaks
The life that frowns, the time that seeks

A song within my soul forever new
The loving, ah, the loving you.

The Writer 01.22.12
The thoughts alight, ignite my mind, then dissipate
My lights burn bright like meteorites but then abate
And thoughts become a smoldering shade.

I am a thought catcher, a capturer of meteorites
Fireflies, which having flashed their lights
With sudden silence vanish to the nights.

This memory muddled life, this gossamer of patterned rays
These fireworks that leave no patterns on the sky
Beyond the moment’s murky mess
These mermaids of the night, which light makes colorless.

What do I become when memories fade?
Of what ethereal quanta life is made?
I’m a thought fisher who roams the night
And all the thoughts I catch and release, I write.

Love Is Life 01.15.12 
When first I loved you, all I saw was bright
With hopes and visions of infinite art
And beauty came to dwell upon my sight
And happiness to bloom within my heart.

Then time began to rust the shine away
Make ordinary all the gifts we own
And cruel fatigue crept gently, day by day
And love began to abdicate the throne.

When hearts depart in separate ways, the pain
Grows like a cancer in the throat and chokes
And in the aching soul, the scars remain
And hearts begin to beat with empty strokes.

Love, happiness, and pain together lie
And love is life; we come, we love, we die.

You Make Me Happy 01.08.12
You make me happy when I am with you
Time stops to let me watch the way I do
Then swiftly slips the afternoons away
As if to say that he will have his way.

Oft I wonder if he could be jealous
He tries to get between the two of us
Each time we wet out lips and start to cling
Nor lets the silence do the uttering.

Kissing you is swimming in the moonlight
And holding you, wine by the fireside
Loving you is Mozart on a clear night
And having you is finding God inside.

You are my needs fulfilled, my will to cope
The beauty of the rose, my dreams, my hope.

Loving Of A Different Kind 12.18.11 
I do not trust my mind
It tortures and it teases
And wonders where it pleases
Leaving me behind;
I do not trust my mind.

Sometimes I find a mystic universe
In the corner of your smile
And you, my peaceful world
My isolated isle
Where smiles and sun sip gently and converse.

Sometimes you sparkle like the evening gold
Magnificent, unreachable, and cold
And then you soften with a mellowed sigh
Nestle on my chest and with me lie.

Ah, my quiet loving years
Have touched the buds of spring again with you
Have shed their wisdom and their timid fears
And matched the living glow when flowers sing for two.

What dormant moods and feelings you induce
What visions that molest or else seduce
What opium flesh that fumes within my soul
Apple in the mouth of God, dripping milky juice.

There are dreams that only women fear
And deeds that only men in secret do
And passions that engulf me when I draw you near
That neither dreams nor secrets ever knew.

Yes, there is madness in your love and wine
And rapture of a laughing little child
And perfumed tropics that are moist and mine
To venture in their warm enchanting wild.

My poise and posture abdicate upon your sight
And reason lags behind
And man becomes a heedless child
Whose love is of a different kind;
I only trust my heart when I’m with you
I do not trust my mind.

Apart 12.11.11 
Apart, we are, so far away
The hours linger, snore, and stray
And stretch the night until it snaps;
How do I ease these startled gaps?

Away from you I sleep with open eyes
And age with wicked speed
And from my ruthless distance, realize
You are my soul’s most solemn need;
Loving you is how I pray
And gather hopes for every day.

I remember how you always
Made my misty mornings fresh
How the blushing sun, still yawning
Rose to gaze upon your flesh
And how I loved to look and look
At every dimple, niche, and nook
And orbit in your music eyes
Oh, your eyes, your sky-full eyes
How they'd etherize and sing
And how, when in them, I was king.

When it is time and I return to you
Do not gasp nor speak
Gently hold my face the way you used to do
And calmly wipe my cheek
And remember, I’ve become a different man
Pruned by love and death
A hungry man who longs and yearns
To ravel in your sweat and travel with your breath.

And when we will remember and embrace
Do not look too close upon my face
After all the distance and the time
There are years and stories I cannot erase
And tired looks no longer in their prime.

But still my love endures, a fervent truth
And you upon my lips, a haunting tune
I’ll always find you beautiful as youth
Enchanting as a smiling, distant moon.

Come be my dream and spread upon my bed
A fragrant garden, moist with pearly due
And I would mold my shoulder for your head
And lie with you and brew and stew...

Your Renoir Face 12.04.11 
So much I miss you, every time and place
Bring back ‘impressions’ of your Renoir face
These days and nights are colorless and cold
No blush to kindle into my into my embrace.

How kind you were to me, how lovingly
You gazed upon my chest and let your hair
Undress, caress me, gently, lovingly
Oh, what enchanting rainbow dream you were.

But now, apart, I waste my fading youth
No zeal to feel, no passion to create
And time has undermined my every truth
Yet one endures this time-eroding fate.

So long as you within my soul remain
My love can tame the emptiness and pain.

Little Man 11.27.11
Little Man
My little tiger boy
I watch your clumsy little fingers play
With reckless joy
Toy after toy will fly away
Then off you run
And I will bend to mend what you have done
Day after day.

Little Man of a thousand words and motions
If I could teach you every truth I know
Before you grow
Would you be wise?
Would you have fewer questions in your busy eyes?
Or would your playful youth decline
Nor let some somber truth of mine
Remote and blurred
Disturb the magic of your little world.

Little Man in bloom and how...
How often I have gazed upon your sunny face
And wondered when to tell you, “I must draw the line.”
And that my truths are mine
My years, my tears, my fears are mine
And so, your truth is youth
A giggle and a shaky tooth
That’s all you need to know for now
And that is all you know.

Yes, I have been to many places
All the same
And watched the empty faces fade
Heard the lonely chattering of slippy dentures
And the eerie whistling of the hearing aid
And yes, at times became dismayed but never lost my faith
Except when love was absent, then I felt afraid.

The time is short before you leave the nest
And there is so much loving to invest
And bedtime stories left to tell
And words and words to learn and spell
And question after question left to answer
And precious times to capture and remember
And other times to argue and protest.

Little Man in bloom and budding
What joy to watch you grow
And see your branches spreading
Beyond me as they blow.

Apart, we grow, apart
Little Man in bloom
Where would I be?
If in your little heart
There was no room for me.

Love Often Hurts 11.20.11
How I have loved you all my life and yet
'Twas only yesterday that we had met
My only fear is losing you and all
The wasted years apart my one regret.

Like waves that ever seek the ocean wall
I tire not in loving you at all
And verses dormant, deep within my soul
Spring to my lips, in bloom, upon your cal.

Love often hurts; pray do not let the pain
Go deep to shake our clinging roots again
The rose of love, she blows in tempest climes
Yet buds return if roots and stem remain.

Love me with all the sorrows, pains, and fears of every day
Hold high your head and I will love the tears and fears away.

Everything’s On Loan 11.13.11 
I borrowed all my atoms from the earth
And nature mixed and matched my human form
Amidst the constant death and vibrant birth
The heavens loaned me soul and made me warm.

My knowledge comes from years of human strife
My energy from mother earth and sun
My intellect, my nature, and my life
Are shaped and touched and changed by everyone.

My dwellings come from woods and stones and mines
All borrowed like myself and not my own
No do my children nor these very lines
Belong to me, no everything’s on loan.

But then I loved you and began to see
My thoughts, my feelings, do belong to me. 

Fatherland 11.06.11
I watch the trees undress in autumn sun
Reveal their private branches one by one
Unmindful of my gaze, no blush, no cry
Embrace the humming wind and mark the sky.

These clouds of misty perfume and the breeze
Bring back your face amidst the naked trees
And tipsy violins and all the sins
Of gushing youth and ah, the memories.

Where mighty, melancholy mountains peak
And olive branches meditate and speak
Unto the earth, who is so old and noble
And the vine—
Invites the birds to gossip on her cheek.

Fatherland
Oh, Fatherland
If only I can hold your hand
And stand upon your shore
Behold your hoary mountains dive into the sea and snore
With mystifying grace
Implore the endless waves to wash your ancient face.

Fatherland
Before I gray I will be back
I will be back one misty autumn day
To hug your loving dirt against my chest
And plant a garden on your ruddy breast
Loiter together in the timid afternoon
Until the sun begins to blush before the moon.

Some weary nights I wonder if you sleep
I see the worry on your mountain face
And frowning furrows run so dark and steep
And little soldiers run about the place.

Hoary mountain land repose, unfrown your brow
Forget the little soldiers now
Look back a thousand scores, recount
The many times some little soldiers ran about your mound
What do the little soldiers know?
So they come and so they go
And you will have their dust and mine
And every year there will be snow.

Fatherland
The footsteps of the Lord stood once upon your sand
And the sea upon a storm stood still
And there are little soldiers under every hill
And the cedar trees upon the mount command:
“Thou shalt not kill.”
And quietly pray for peace
In the land of the Lord our Father
In the Fatherland. 

Where Memories Go 10.30.11
You and I
And all the secret seeds we sowed
And all the flowers we hatched to sprout
That none will ever hear about, or see
But you and me.

Do you not wish to see
That time’s cashiers
Collect the years
And hand us memories instead;
Do you not wish to see
That love is memory fed
And like a child—sleeps, dreams, and fears
While dreamless time devours the hours
And never goes to bed.

You asked me once
With sunrise in you eyes
What happens to the snow?
Whereto do rivers flow?
Where will our memories go?
Do you not wish to see
That after you and me
Our memories swan south
And cry across the sky
Without a mouth.

Like song makes singer
And singer makes song
Like death is ever weak
And life is ever strong
Like blooms grow out of rocks
And dead seeds are raised by rain
Memories subside to sleep
Then come around again.

Do you not wish to see
We are the fore and after
Heirs to life’s past
Seeds to life’s future
Sharers of our planet’s azure breath
Fuelers to her cycles of life and death
(Which fester and burn, hunger and yearn)
Patrons of her ever-whispering memory urn.

How Do You Say Good-Bye 10.23.11
How do you say good-bye
To all those mighty years that grew upon your face
And slowly crept in every fold and silent place
And blended with your very soul
But never passed you by
How do you say good-bye?

Those mighty, mighty years
Of resurrecting zeal
And morning prime
We tore them off the fleeting sail of time
And they are our roots
Those silent hugging mutes
That form the deepest darkness bring
A sunny spring
And many splendid cheers
Those mighty, mighty years.

And if we say good-bye
Who would supply the spirit here
The conflict and the magic and the fear
And, every now and then, a cold and frothy bear
And if we say good-bye
Who then would suture time together every year?

Let us wander the tavern at the corner of the street
Share a jug of frothy spirit
Something warm to eat
Watch the many faces of a lazy afternoon
Exit together in the dimming light
And then, pretending we shall be together soon
Depart on separate ways into the night.

Ode To A Dying Friend 10.16.11
And when we are together, you and I,
in the silent room
And it is time to speak
My hesitating phrases cannot find the exit
Bounce from cheek to cheek
Collapse exhausted, in my throat they lie
So utterless and dead
I slowly sit upon your bed
Squeeze your hand and stroke your head
And let the clumsy silence cry:
“Hello my friend I came to say good-bye”
And everything is said...

Why do I fear your weary setting eyes
Upon my pounding chest tattoo good-byes?
And angry visions pace my mind, I hear
Their drumming hoofs approaching and I rise.

These tired processes of life must come to rest
And it is time to go
Time to recollect the scattered years of memories and woe
Time to know that it is all the same
And ancient ceremonial game
A melancholy setting to the west
And you become a name
When they will fold your arms upon your breast.

And so we part
I, wondering is it wine or blood that beats within your heart?
For you lie deep in peaceful sleep, content resigned
While angry visions pace my mind
So I rebel, I hate, deny
Yet in this cold and lonesome place
So fearless and alone you lie
And I remain behind to face
The separation and the pain
The fear that I would die again
In yet another cold and lonesome place.

Nursing Home 10.09.11
Yes she was old
The crowded years around her eyes 
Stood still and cold
And I do not forget her melancholy face
Forever gazing in that little space
Like an ancient moon
Like the aimless shadow of a wasted afternoon
So pale and frail and waiting…

Good years
Good years forever gone
Good years consumed
What little time that lingers on, is doomed
No depth, her pleasures mild and few
No dreams, no luster, nothing new
And every morning summons less of sunshine with it
Less who love and less who care and less who visit
Yet still, she’s waiting…

Fatigue has come to dwell
Among the crowded years
Among the chilly loneliness and fears
And still she hears
The fading echoes of her soul
Resound against a hopeless void
“I wait, I wait, I wonder why?”
She waits to die
And still, she’s waiting…

Nostalgia On A Winter Eve 10.02.11
The snowflakes tremble in the dimming light
And it is cold, and sad, and very white
A melancholy stillness lulls the wind to sleep
And bids the setting sun, goodnight.

With memories, a little wind, and fate
On winter nights like these, I hibernate
Away from man, my loneliness and I
Where peace is vast like death and intimate.

I saved my sweetest dreams for you, before
But since you left, somehow, I dream no more
Instead I die each night and resurrect
And work by day in order to forget.

I placed my life in savings at the bank
I spend it wisely and I always thank
My banker, though he gives no interest
Nor does he tell me how much I have left.

How oft I hunger for your love and yearn
Ignite you in my bed and with you burn
But then I fear the shattering of dreams
Upon a fossil past that can’t return.

So, stay away, I need my memories
Of all the lusty wine and dusty cheese
That, still, I taste upon your gasping lips
On cold and lonesome winter nights like these.
OCO, October 6, 1981

The Love Song Of A Lonely Old Man 09.25.11
If only I could hold you
Lonely as I drift in some forbidden space
If only I could taste your lips
And wear your sweat upon my face
It would not be so lonely
If I could touch you, only.

I am a solitary man
I dream about the perfumes I cannot resist
About the bracelet delicately curled about your wrist
A melancholy man, with dreams that tease and  torture
Dreams of such a sweat, forbidden nature
And dreams, forgive me if I do not list.

The tide has come so many fold
And I am old
Yet I remain a child
My blood with time grew cold
But still my spirit wild
Make love to me tonight
Make love to me but in the fever of the moment
Loving by arrangement leaves me void inside
Love me, love me
With the temper of the tempest
Resurrecting, pulsatile, and violent.

See the darkness, born again of dying light
And the wine within the cheeks
Imparts a madness to the night
Come, come before we die
Ignite and let us laugh and cry
And fight…
Loving is magnificent after a fight.
OCO December 14, 1980 

Together 09.18.11
Like the vine leaves twirl as they fall to ground
So the autumn sun will bake them brown
And the wine in the barrel, sleeping sound
Will await its time to go to town.

Like the seasons come and go forever
Together, you and I, together
Make the buds for spring and grapes for summer
Then cuddle in the snow and shiver.

You're the lovers' wine and I'm the lover
Come, come be mine, lets love and stagger
Together paint the seasons, together
Grow old and bald and fold and wither.
Las Vegas, September 6, 1980

Your Face 09.11.11
I find your face in clouds that lace the skies
Formation of a sailing dream inscribe your eyes
I sense your spirit all around in splendid things
In pregnant earth, in birth, in little wings.

And how I miss your fever in my bones
Your smile, your sweat, your sentimental moans
And even when I'm with you, warm and loved, I do
I miss the yearning, ah—the missing you.

I find your face in clouds that pace the skies
Formation of a flaming dream embrace your eyes
And when not with you all I do is rise
Into the clouds, recline, and fantasize.
Oklahoma, November, 1979

Captain Adam 09.04.11
Look and see
Captain Adam in the tree
Searching with his telescope
For the ship he lost at see.

Windy day
Look at Captain Adam sway
Raving, waving, as the wind
Blows his sailing ship away.

How in vain
Captain Adam went insane
Searching for the ship he lost
That he’ll never find again.

Life is sad
Everyone is good and bad
Never finding what they lose
Always losing what they had.
Chicago, July 21, 1979

To Love 08.28.11
Love is all
A yearning need
A beckoning
A solemn, frightened, fluttering
Indeed.

Alas
How all alone I stand
Come, come, my love
Engulf my summer thirsty lad
With rain and mist
Give me the fever to exist
To bloom
To bleed
To sing
Come bring the spring with you
Let love make every little thing
Seem beautiful and new.

Come, love me, touch me
Hold my hand
Come, come, and let’s forever stand
Together, like the mighty trees
So grand yet blissfully at ease
To dance and whisper in the breeze
And bask against the empty sky
With roots so very deep they lie
Abreast the warming heart of earth
And from the silent darkness bring
A constant birth.
New York City, May 10, 1979

The East Wind Calls 08.21.11
The East Wind calls
It softly whispers in my void
Rejoice, rebel, unfold
The past kidnaps the minutes fast
You're growing old.

The wind is wild
It plucks my islands from the stream
I bud, I bloom, I dream...

Tomorrow, may it come today
Together, wine and music play
With candle fire danced the moon
And begged the night to stay.

There was a baby mocking bird
It fell and it was cold, it died
The mother cried
She left the nest and flew away.

The East Wind calls my name
I know that I must go
The wind may never call again.
Atlanta, Georgia, October 2, 1978

The Passing Cloud 08.14.11
Stay,
Passing cloud,
I love your shade;
Your fleeting cotton lashes fade
Then off you blow
And I remain,
Alone again,
Remembering
Your gentle flow of loving rain
That made my little lilies blow.
In air on the way to Lebanon, June, 1977

Friends 08.07.11
When I was poor in olden days
Nobody seemed to care
And no one even thought of me
My life was sad and bare.

The wheel of life rolled on and on
And wealth into my hands
Then all of hem who were my foes
Became my loving friends.

I knew my friends were true to me
At least, I thought I knew
But when my wealth abandoned me
My friends left me and flew.

I post to thing about my life
Why am I living still
So little that I did was right
Most of the rest was ill.

I seek, I search, at every turn
No answer do I find
I hope the secret will unfold
And pacify my mind.
Tripoli, Lebanon, 1962

Dedication In Memoriam 07.31.11
A Sonnet given to my father who died twenty-four years ago of pancreatic cancer on July 26, 1987.  It was the prologue poem in my first poetry book, Loves and Lamentations of a Life Watcher, which I dedicated to him.

 I give to you the blossoms of my life,
The yearnings of my soul and sparkling mind,
My tumbling transit through the years, my strife,
My mirth and tears, my hopes and fears, combined.

I give to you these children, all the sons
And daughters of my heart to love and nurse;
I give to you my growth, my marathons,
The gift that God has given me, my verse.

I give till I have nothing more to give
But all my love and that you’ve always had
And as I live, so in me you shall live,
And through my children after I am dead.

So long as we can love, death cannot be
So then, forever, shall you be with me.

Our Children Will Laugh at Us 07.24.11
Our life is very short in cosmic terms
Our four-and-a-half-billion-year-old earth
Is but an infant compared to other planets and stars
And we still celebrate when we make ninety.

What a dear price we pay for our short lives
We pay it with myopic shortsightedness
With being blind to all ephemera
With making wars on each other
With separating into countless countries
With destroying those who think differently
And a hundred years from now
Our children will laugh at us.

Our earth is dying, slowly, silently
But our minds are busy with now
Our great, great, grandchildren
Will suffer for our callousness
But our minds are busy with now
All that we fought for and about
Will be swallowed by dust and oceans
But our minds are busy with now
Our clean water and air will become quite rare
And our countries will slowly decline and decay
But still, our minds are busy with now.

We do not recognize our selfishness
But our great, great, grandchildren will
When they see what a sickened planet
We have bequeathed unto them all
And we will hear their wheezing form our graves.

Three Years After 07.17.11
Sunday is time to discharge our hearts
It is so hard to know when to intrude
Upon a soul that has lost its garden.

In the background, thousands like us await
Silent but full of words and thoughts unsaid
Who wish they could in some way pave the path.

We think of Bobby and Kay together
How they loved climbing up life’s winding stairs
But never forgot, the higher they got
That they are ruddy earth from Oklahoma.

We see two hands, in one a baseball bat
In the other a family bouquet
And when they clap together, love thunders.

Many of us wish they could smooth the path
That stretches from sunset till sunrise
Like life and death, entangled without end.

So many of us wish to be your grief
But grief is loving—some released, some kept
And you have kept the most, released the least.

Life is memories, nothing else survives
But images of how we were and whom we touched
Bobby has touched us all, lives in us all
And as we tell his tales, he will live on
As long as tales are told and children hark.

We pray that our tears will ease your heart
That our thoughts will bring you peace of mind
That Bobby’s garden will become his shrine
And that you’ll be the evergreens that bloom
Along the path from sunset till sunrise.

A Letter To My Dead Lover 07.10.11
Leave my life alone
I’ve wiped it clean of all your thoughts
Have dusted all your words out of my ear
My doorbell rings no longer to your touch
And if you knock, I would not hear.

The vase beside my bed
Brims with dark silence, and instead
Of crimson roses it has pencils now
Which, I sharpen just before I write
All the thoughts that scuttle me at night.

The sofa in the living room
Has cushions, where you used to sit
And shawl my neck and shoulders with your arm
And the bird-watching windowpane
That heard the songs of spring-intoxicated beaks
Now blankly eyes the sun and hardly speaks.

You left me while I held your hand
You left, I still don’t not understand
Your setting eyes, which hold my tears
You dim diminishing, which strokes my fears
Your valediction calls my heart still hears. 

Hungry or Wise 07.03.11
If only we were rational
If Homo sapiens were all wise
If reason were not for the few
There would not be evil or good
Such terms are merely blinds
For our dogmatic minds.

But hunger is an omnivore
Devours ethics like a ghoul
And shatters wisdom into dust;
No hungry mortal
Remains rational.

A Safer Sky Sonnet # 76 06.26.11
(Unless their writings are read by other sentient beings, when Homo sapiens join the dinosaurs, their memories will vanish with them.)

To sentient life beyond this tired sphere
I send this longing song, this yearning rhyme
I fear love may not have much longer here
She needs a safer place in space and time.

When you and I fade into dust, who keeps
Our love; where would it’s fragrant blossoms nest?
When our planet in oblivion sleeps
Where will love’s restless wandering spirits rest?

After we’re gone, if love must persevere
It needs to seed some other soil than ours
Where blooms play tunes upon the eyes and flowers
And are not plucked or trampled on by fear.

Go on sweet love, find us a safer sky
So we can go on loving when we die.

Two Thoughts 06.19.11 
1. Humanity is delusional;
    The rational are unusual
    Homeless they roam
    But find no home.
2. When truth came knocking
    At the doors of belief
    Belief was frightened;
    It double-locked the doors
    And screamed, “no solicitors”
    Then shooed the truth away.

When You Hurt Me 06.12.11
When you hurt me, unwittingly, of course
I slide into the caverns of my soul
(Where the cool green reminds me of your eyes)
And hold on to my feelings long enough
To write, with their deep-blue ink, a poem
That softens the pains like merciful rains.

Perhaps love means that hurt can do no harm
That hurt just grafts pink poems onto thorns
To tease the sipping lips of hungry bees
And give the fingertips a chance to bleed;
(The need to suffer is a lover’s need
That those who do not love do not concede.)

I watch your primal branches in the wind
Flail all about the sky with rustling sounds
Serenade with tender, whispering, voices
That I, at last, have come to understand;
(That what you’ve said with every precious word
Is what I’ve felt and seldom what I’ve heard.)

The soul is our interpreter and eyes
Receives, like the deep earth, the atmosphere
Rebellious, temperamental, inclement
And lets it all soak in and come to rest
In its fecund belly, then sends it back
A resurrected seed to green the air. 

All of life is but a resurrection
From the dead earth; I wonder how can death
Give us life and life give us death if they
Were not the syllables and sounds of home
The cosmic alphabet of everything
The ebb and tide of our universe.

We can only love with our senses
What is remote, un-sensed, remains unloved
But you and I are intertwined in our
Conflagrant web of sense that emanates
Both past and future lights, bright like a star
To make up all the moments that we are.

To A Friend, Who Died 06.05.11
I felt ashamed when I beheld
The colossus falter and fall
To the immortal heft and fist
That not a mortal can resist.

I felt shamed to see the glow
Of nature’s raging fire storm
Consume to ash
The beautiful and kind
The starlit mind
The smile that caught the sunrise
The heart that fought the sunset.

I felt ashamed
Hearing the music’s dissonance
Watching eloquence stutter
Seeing elegance brown
And sky-full eyes capitulate and drown.

I am ashamed, my friend
Ashamed of my youth
Ashamed of my health
Ashamed of my luck
Ashamed that I arrived too late
To mitigate your fate.

Sixties Song 05.29.11

What will you do with me?
When I am stooped and slow
When white hairs will no longer grow
Where black hairs used to be.

What will you do with me?
When feet no longer dance
Nor arms conduct romance
And dreams no longer sail the sea.

What will you do?
When years are few
And fewer every year
And when I can no longer hear
The rustling whispers of your dress
Nor listen to your skin confess.

Where does love go?
The love that gallops with your hips
And lingers in the moistened gasps between our lips
And sweats between our palms
And overflows our arms.

If it were true
Love never dies
If love just leaves the eyes
When eyes go dry with sleep
And hovers up in blue-laced clouds that keep
Our stories and our kisses and our pain
In drops of memories that smell of rain.

If it were true that love
Is not of time or space
That it’s of smiles and tears without a face
Smiling tears that grace the sky
And then embrace us when we die.

What do you do with me?
What do I do with you?
But live and love
For that is all we do.

Villanelle 05.22.11

The greatest distances are in the mind
The sun and stars seem near to open eyes
But oh, how far they are when eyes are blind.

When yet a child, with heart serene and kind
You are instructed how to form your ties
The greatest distances grow in your mind.

When strong with youth and searching, you do find
Some truths are clearer where your vision lies
But oh, how blurred they are where you are blind.

When reason beckons you to gaze behind
But deaf you stay to fellow-human cries
The greatest distances stay in your mind.

When white with years, you accept, resigned
That hearts grow closer when their love is wise
But far apart whenever love is blind.

Unite or die, no other humankind
Will have another chance to realize
The greatest distances are in the mind
How far apart we are when we are blind

Possessed by Clouds 05.15.11

First Cry
1.
Possessed by clouds (those fluffy dreams of sky)
And like their stormy tears, sown to the wind
I seeped between the huddled grains of soil
To where the breathless darkness fed on quietude
And deep, like roots, awaited my blossoming.

2.
You, a little brook, swayed the surface with your hips
And downward dripped into my up-looking eyes
Blurring my pupils with tears of light;
I quietly lost my upward sight
And only gazed sideways and down.

3.
There was a time where pretense was a game of chess
A stratagem to kill the king
We said what could not be meant
And meant what could not be said
And confessed in dark little corners with muffled looks of silence.

4.
One day, when wine was in the cheeks and we could not hide the blush
It was easier to touch than speak; (as in a game of chess
when looks dominate, and the right move was the dangerous one,
or else the king would die) I held your hand
And let the hot molecules of salt smolder my palm
Until my clasp had said it all, unaided by the alphabets of humanity.

5.
Détente was your palm’s reply, and I understood…
Your reticent eyes’ tacit whispers quivered with my heart
Dangerous move, dangerous, for the queen lay unprotected
Unarmed, unwilling—but wishing, moist
Most eloquent with faint intimations;
Dangerous game (we said too much with touch)
I closed my dazed eyes and let my lips
Supplicate as they groped toward your utterless mouth.

6.
The blush of wine within our cheeks burned with sudden urgency
It was a stark-naked moment of capitulation
The check mate that stopped the game at the threshold of abandon
Between the madness of hunger and the barbwires of reality.

7.
Your nectar lingered in the frightened memories of my lips
As we ebbed and tided with each clandestine moon;
You almost twitched each time I convulsed
Moon after moon, you almost twitched each time I convulsed,
Until one day, when the stars lay hid in the fluffy dreams of sky,
You burst—it was your first convulsion with a startle
Which eased the torture and endeared the pain.

The Tree
8.
You have seen how time toasts and crumbles years
How experience mothers and nurtures biases
How wisdom (slowly birthed by painful learning)
Quietly mushrooms in the shadows of silence.

9.
You have witnessed how irrational the rational can be,
How the irrational (disguised as rational)
Can adumbrate insight and beguile the mind,
And how foresight is not possible for amorous souls.

10.
You have seen me sparkle and explode like sun waves
Ooze tunes of words, strung like beads for your neck
Run and return, fly and alight, sublime and condense
Like inclement weather, which blurs the seasons
And stuns the night and day with its confusion.

11.
And I have seen you (when I was vouchsafed to see)
Because your face lay hid behind you smile
Seen you love to the edge of hate, and fear to the brim of death
And despair on the faltering bridge between the banks of our lives.

12.
And I have seen you burnt with surrender
Too tired for escape, too delicate for thorns
Consume your dreams for sustenance
And with inscrutable patience born of faith in the unknown,
Faith in coincidence, faith in the astonishment of change,
Silently wait, as if life were a Nile, and youth, a Phoenix.

13.
Woman, you are, complete with un-flapped wings
Complete with tears that glow beneath the ashes
Complete with heat that makes no smoke
Complete with tacit courage shrouded in persistence.

14.
I left; you stayed; I played; you prayed
I strayed; you swayed between the thighs of might and meekness
And I, without a chase, had not a cause to run
No den to hibernate me, no house to call me home
And in this torpid flood of loveless void
Not a tree to alight upon but your ever open arms,
Arms that only closed to enclose me.

Discovery
15.
“All truths wait in all things,” said the bard
Oh, Whitman, let me sing to myself the song of time
Let me say, nothing that I know improves my knowing
That nothing is more important than spreading joy
That there is an art to being the music of nature
Resonating freely with bugles of the wind
Dancing with pain as if it were a meek maiden
Finding peace far away from reputation
And untying emotions with fingertips of compassion.

16.
Let me say, no belief is worth a dispute
And no nation in history has ever been honorable
And no one can see beyond his time-space cocoon
And only the noble few care enough about tomorrow to sacrifice today
And fewer still are those who love enough to comprehend evil
        as good emotions turned awry
But fewest are the nationless citizens of this nationalized world.

17.
Let me say to you, who stood guard on my fallow years
Whose smiles are now my refuge and my home
Whose breath is my revival and whose skin, my bread and wine—
Let me, without regret or shame, say that nothing wonderful
Is diminished by delay, nothing beautiful by eyes that fail to see
And nothing indomitable is without love.

18.
Come now into my quivering lips
Into my archaic cave of passions and poems
You will see throbbing, on the walls, your name
Inscribed with tedious care to span centuries
To tell our tale afresh, anew—a timeless epic that regenerates
And dares declare that life is naught but love,
That all that seems important may be trivial,
And all that seems trivial may be important
And that we live our lives in reverse from young to wise
And make mistakes to suffer pain
The livid pain of love, love unattained.

19.
Tomorrow, when the seasons don their festive vestments
Let us, in splendid garb, reciprocate their kindness
Find gratitude in graying and obeying nature’s ways
Nor look aback, nor ahead, but only to the moments of our days.

20.
Recite with me, for we have lived a poem never read
And found within, many a universe, untrodden, undisturbed
Awaiting us, explorers of the soul, to make discovery.

Ode To Mothers (Sonnet 81) 05.08.11

 As clouds, like floating breasts, will need to cry
To feed the suckling mouths of earth below
So oceans raise their spirits to the sky
To feed the wafting, weeping breasts with snow.

God’s morning eye that blesses from afar
And warms the famished heart of earth with love
A cosmic, kindled, mighty, martyr star
To light our night, candles itself above.

A bit of faith is but a bit of God
All powerful, all knowing, yet unseen
No matter how inscrutable and odd
It is what is and what has ever been.

This ever mothering space in which we hover
Is a loving macrocosm of every mother.

Coat Watching 05.01.11

 This afternoon, alone, I went coat watching
So many coats, oh my, but how to choose?
These fashions scale the years, too high for me
Then back they fall and climb and fall again
I’m thankful that the colors still remain
Unchanged, and that colors do not grow old
I wanted black to hold her wavy gold.

So many coats, but not one would return
My gaze, not one would hold my fingertips
I fondled all and slipped my hands inside
You’d think they would have turned away or cried
But, it was worse; they never even stirred
Indifference is a very painful word.

Before I gave up, only one more store
Perhaps one coat will come alive and catch
My wondering eyes, or blush a deeper black
I slipped my fondling hands from stack to stack
Only indifference; why am I ignored?
I almost raised the matter to the Lord.

Enough, I muttered turning to walk out
When with my fingertips I heard a shout
That came from somewhere high upon a hook
Where horizontal gazes never look
I took it down as it commenced to smile
And said to me in perfect tailored style:
I am the cashmere black designed to hold
Upon its back your lady’s wavy gold.

The Weight of Dreams 04.24.11

 “Who needs love?
  It bites like a bat then flies away
  Leaving us rabid;
  I have other pleasures,
  Causes to devote my life to;
  Love is a bat,
  A fearsome rat,
  A black fledermaus,
  A spelunking, blood-sucking pair of jaws.”

All this, I clearly heard
All this, she said without a word
And like a gasp, I held my solitude in
And slowly stroked her trembling skin.

She stared afar and would not blink, as though
Not blinking could delay or stop the flow;
Her eyes, though stilled, still brimmed and rains
In trickles tumbled down her haughty veins;
My fingers tasted salt in every drop
Still, she would not come down her mountaintop.

I held my solitude in
Silence could not remain unuttered long
Silence, more eloquent than words, but not as strong
Silence, it throbbed and panted underneath her dress
Silence, it heaved and pounded but would not confess.

Her mind, at last, took in a stuttering sigh
Hung life on one arm of the golden scales
Hung all her dreams upon the other arm
And watched the scales waver and undulate
Inside her choked confusion and debate.

What a storm she slept
Frothed and groaned under the wait for dreams
An overburdened ship barely afloat
Alone, against the sea, gasping for land.

But when the sun hurrahed, aglow
I felt her fingers grope below
The tepid darkness of my sheets
And whisper to my startled skin
Words only fingertips could speak
And poems only hands could quote.

We understood, my grateful skin and I
The weight of dreams had toppled down her scales
Reversed the prior verdicts of her soul.

A pallid smile reclaimed her charms
She gasped then burrowed in my arms
A fresh bouquet resigned to cry
Her fragrance into time, unheard
To state that death is safer and is less absurd
And were it not for living Safety wouldn’t be a word.

 

Ode To Languages 04.17.11

Languages,
I salute you all who are
Forever— enduring legacies
Ambassadors, past and future
Colors of emotions and garbs of beliefs
Makers and segregators of peoples and classes
Movers of history, motivators of masses and migrations
Embellishers of cultures, happenings, achievements, glories
Ravenous and promiscuous, you plagiarize, copulate, inseminate
Ignite, enlighten, excite, frighten, seduce, belie, induce, entice, imply
With shades and shadows more numerous than nature’s infinite varieties.

Oh, indomitable, heavyweight, resounding, written symbols
Oh, roots, profound, immortal, ramifying, without beginnings
Oh, branches, fecund, frolicking, sprouting, without ends
Oh, human spirit, lavish, limned, musical, sublime
Oh, volatile fuels, fuming with fired imaginations
Oh, oxygen of minds and vast spaces of souls
Oh, whisperings of God quivering in hearts
Oh, letters, words, languages
How we all love you.

 

Impressions 04.10.11
First thoughts, first feelings, are merely beginnings
Like life, they evolve, transmute, and climb
To higher and higher grounds;
Then, closer to death,
The vision clears.

Preaching 04.03.11
Do not try to unlock closed minds
Preaching to the deaf is wasteful
Wisdom means you dare shed your blinds
And enlightenment is painful.

Thoughts @ Thinking 03.27.11
We can only think with thoughts we have
We cannot think with thoughts that we have not
A young person thinks from within youth
An old person thinks from within age
An illiterate person thinks from within experience
A literate person also thinks with what he has read
A simple person thinks one step at a time
A wise person thinks many steps ahead
An inculcated person thinks from within his biases and dogmas
A free person thinks with liberated reason
Freedom of thought thrives on demolition of all restraints
We are but what we think, and
How we think dictates what shall become of us.

The Server 03.20.11 
I need a server who will serve
Those of us who don’t deserve;
To the deserving aid will come
While to the undeserving, none;
This, our injustice, does endure
Richer the rich, poorer the poor.

All-Or-None-rs 03.13.11
Allornoners, color blind
To all but black and white
No graded shades to grace their mind
‘Tis only wrong or right.
Allornoners judge with ease
Find spectra most obscene
Conditions either boil or freeze
But cannot be between.

Of Aging Thrice 03.06.11
From birth to death
The same for all
In time, we age.
But, our bodies vary
Some get old when still young
And some stay young when old.
Our minds are the last to age
Remaining secretly young
Behind imagination
Until they grow unaware.

The Grand Pretense 02.27.11
Our tacit spurning 
Our sick repudiation
Of our mentally ill members
Is born out of a grand pretense
That we are but the normal ones
And they, but our blighted burdens.
This skewed selection sadly susurrates
That we are the vaunters, the vacant
The un-empathic, the ungrateful
The lonesome, loveless lot.

Lifelong River Sonnet#76 02.20.11
With every dawn when day awakens night
And you are on my other side of bed
I watch horizon's ruddy cheeks ignite
The rising infant sun’s meek, blushing head.
With every evening when my day inclines
While you are on my other side of strife
You watch me sigh soon as the sun declines
Then take me back to quiet home and life.
Although from morn to eve we strive apart
We hold the sunset and we hail the rise
And distances resign when heart to heart
We bridge the working days with yearning eyes.
Apart we labor though we flow together
Between the banks of life, a lifelong river.

Valentine's Prayer Sonnet#75 02.13.11
I love you with a convict’s passion for freedom
With a mother’s compassion for her suckling child
With an apostle’s love for Christ and martyrdom
With spring’s fecundity that frolics on the wild.
I love you with the quietude of church bells at rest
With flutters of the flags at Independence Day
I love you with the morning birdsongs from the nest
And daybreak’s awakening rays that help me pray.
I love you with my windy passions soaring high
With eager flapping wings that abdicate this earth
And roam into the silent solitude of sky
Among the fire-lit stars and the sun-lit mirth.
I love you with all of God’s languages to his universe
You are my alpha, my omega, and my heaven-bent verse.

With Prayers or With Wine Sonnet#74 02.06.11 
You must be in my arms when next you cry
Lovers should never cry or grieve apart
I’ll hold your face when sadness crowds your eye
And dip your cold, blue fingers in my heart.
You must be in my dreams each time I sleep
To wash my days with ever smiling ease
Your deeply felt concerns, you must not keep
All to your self, pray, share them with me please.
I must be in your life and you in mine
For us to fly as close to God as man
Has ever flown with prayers or with wine
To conquer fate or change his mighty plan.
Yes, we are one as long as we can fly
Apart we fall, together own the sky.

Your Body 01.30.11
Your body
A sunrise sandy shore
Limned with limpid waves
I know its mountains and its caves
I dwell upon its hieroglyphics and explore
Decipher hints, adore between the lines, and study
Your shielded, sweet, pineapple body.

Sail to me
Sway like a schooner
Stroke and cleave my surface like a swan
Fate always keys the woman to unlock the man
My coffers were not meant to be uncovered sooner
Fifty-two years you sailed to find your mate
Primal, precise, and punctual is fate.

So now you know
I am your final harbor
My arms, your home, your freedom space
Your sails are folded and your mast is stark
Upon the frothing seas, ships never leave their trace
But on the safe and friendly shores they stake their mark
Remember how first we anchored in the dark.

Come to me
And let our song begin
Come with hungry arms and thirsty skin
Come and with your kindling mouth ignite
My mumbling lips, my tumbling night.

My wondering, writing finger roams
Your mighty curves, your haughty domes
Your Nile that overflows my deserts, serpentine and muddy
Your votive lips, supplicating, bloody
Your eellike, rhythmic, reptile body.

New Sky Sonnet #73 01.23.11
I wish for us to retain our newness
We can’t be ordinary and sustain
This vibrant tension and delicious pain
This daily rediscovery of us.
Be new to me each time we talk or touch
Be ever changing, seasonal, like skies
Be different every time we kiss or clutch
I want to find the seasons in your eyes.
Surprise me daily with what you create
Secure my imperfections with your trust
Consume me, force me to regenerate
I wish to shine with you and never rust.
My only love, you are my only sky
And love will keep us new until we die.

My Sunrise Sonnet #72 01.16.10
The moon’s long fingers gently tap my door
Before the sun intrudes upon the sky
The yellow morning yawns, the calm clouds snore
I wrap myself with silence and I cry.
The sun awakens to my timid tears
Alerts the atmosphere, the birds, the trees
Her warming hands uncover all my fears
Her smile, vast, cosmic, puts my soul at ease.
Then heaven’s windows close to hold the night
Who gently rocks my tired eyes to rest
Again, I see your moon-lit face ignite
Escort the morning sun from east to west.
Long have I lived and waited for the light
Long have I slept and wasted in the night.

Old and Young Sonnet #79 01.09.11
When we were old and full of flagrant youth
And passions, uninvited, came to stay
Then left us fearful in the arms of truth
With unwept tears and unsaid words at play.
We floated in the nowhere atmospheres
Too far for our feet to touch the ground
Until the surly gravity of years
Surprised our errant souls and pulled us down.
In youth we roam, in age we venture home
Where latter years are spent with lesser fears
And visions clear and distances grow near
And love makes certain we are not alone.
How old we were with youth, how far apart
How young we are with age, how close in heart.

We Follow Love Sonnet #80 01.02.11
When years drop down upon my face like rains
And heaven’s gray conceals the sunny blue
I measure out my life with loves and pains
And all the smiles that you brought back with you…
Perhaps pain was our teacher and our eyes
And time, our daily bread and holy wine
Perhaps, ‘twas suffering that made us wise
And forged our souls to sprawl and intertwine…
When less of life remains than what has passed
When most our deeds are done and tales are told
When we surmise that naught will ever last
When life, once young, now’s quickly getting old
We close ourselves and close the life we know
And follow love wherever it might go.
'Happy Anniversary' 

Hungry or Wise 12.26.10
If we were rational
If Homo sapiens were wise
If reason were not just for the few
Then good and evil would cease to be;
Such terms are constructs of dogmatic minds.
And hunger is an omnivore
Devours morals like a beast and justifies;
No one who’s hungry can stay rational or wise.

To Lovers Who Wait Sonnet#71 12.19.10
As night and day escort the time away
Upon this mindless unsuspecting earth
Alone I wait with soaring mind astray
The promised rains, my rainbows of rebirth.
This pounding throbbing destiny, this love
This bridge, suspending souls above the slopes
Above the mighty distances that part
Our clinging eyes, our clutching arms and hopes.
Oh groaning swaying bridge, can you sustain
This cyanotic heart without a breath
Can you sustain this never-ending strain
This labored swaying, hovering over death.
So long as chance endures and hopes remain
Then love can bridge the distances and pain.

The Day Before Sonnet#70  12.12.10
Oh, destiny, that you will hold my bones
My bashful secrets naked in your night
My sweat, so desperate for your hungry moans
My mighty knees now faltering with fright.
This love, this silent murder of my peace
This flagrant flame th